The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000

在战后的欧洲，男同性恋色情作品和色情杂志的跨国流通如何促进了欧洲男同性恋之间共同身份和归属感的发展？这种形式的情色公民权是如何呼应或使世界主义、人权、平等、社会正义和多元主义的叙述复杂化的，这些都与欧洲一体化和公民权的并行项目有关？虽然欧洲的存在对居住在那里的人来说已经有几个世纪了，但以积极的方式定义欧洲是最近才出现的现象。“欧洲”最初以它不是什么而为人所知，最终以它实际上被认为是什么而被定义。这种对“欧洲”的积极重塑的核心是对共同的“欧洲”历史和政治认同的不断发展的信念，这种信念可以追溯到“希腊”的起源神话。作为对欧洲民族主义和两次世界大战遗留问题的回应，归因于欧洲人民的共同性获得了政治动力。他们被欧洲一体化的理论家们暗指并公开使用，他们试图通过这些手段来想象一个欧洲公域。因此，今天的欧洲霸权植根于四个起源神话：继承罗马法的法律体系，基于基督教和人文主义遗产的团结社会精神，对个人权利和自由的承认，以及源自启蒙运动理性、普遍主义和世界主义原则的普遍主义。正是与战后“欧洲”的价值观和原则相联系，同性恋运动才开始定义自己。在二战及其后果引发的从农村到城市和跨国人口流动的推动下，以及日益增长的“生活方式”消费文化的推动下，男同性恋者最终开始将自己视为受压迫的少数群体的成员，并聚集在一起作为跨国政治选区。正如最近的研究表明的那样，自由普遍主义运动的核心是通过在地方、国家和超国家层面上的同性恋者之间的媒体交流进行跨国协调。然而，这些研究对激进组织、他们与国家和超国家的欧洲政治机构的关系以及他们的媒体网络给予了特权，尽管媒体学者令人信服地认为，是色情和色情作品，而不是激进媒体，成功地接触到了跨越广泛地域的最多数量的同性恋者，最终将他们联系起来，让他们想象一个他们所属的社区。为了解决这一学术差距，“同性恋色情作品所构建的欧洲，1945-2000”将首次绘制出二战结束至21世纪初出版的同性恋色情作品和色情杂志的欧洲生产、流通和消费网络，并以此为基础，发展出一项关于男同性恋想象中的“欧洲”的文化研究。我们将以三种关键的创新方式来实现这一目标：(1)探索由印刷的同性恋色情文化介导的同性恋性想象将如何催化新的、可能相互冲突的方式，让整个欧洲的同性恋者想象彼此以及他们的非欧洲人。(2)通过调查泛欧洲同性恋性想象和政治机构推进的欧洲主义想象之间的共鸣和不和谐。(3)通过关注“同欧洲主义”的情色来质问我们在谈论“欧洲”时谈论（或不谈论）什么。当民族主义和欧元怀疑主义在整个欧洲大陆获得政治动力的时候，这个项目将提供一个新的重要的有利位置，通过揭示后者是如何被一个少数群体想象和色情地重复的，最终将被欧洲机构自己所接受，作为一种定义欧洲与其他国家不同的例外的方式，来思考“欧洲”。

How did the growing transnational circulation of gay male erotica and porn magazines in postwar Europe contribute to the development of a shared identity and sense of belonging among European gay men? How did this form of erotic citizenship echo or complicate narratives of cosmopolitanism, human rights, equality, social justice, and pluralism that were being associated with the parallel project of European integration and citizenship?While the existence of Europe has been evident to those who inhabit it for centuries, its definition by positive means is a more recent phenomenon. Originally known by what it was not, "Europe" eventually came to be defined by what it was thought to actually be. At the core of that positive refashioning of "Europe" was the developing belief in a common "European" history and political identity retroactively mapped back to the origin myth of "Greece." As a response to the legacies of European nationalisms and two world wars, the commonalities attributed to European peoples gained political momentum. They were alluded to and publicly deployed by the ideologues of European integration, who sought out means through which to imagine a European commons. Today's European hegemony is thus anchored in four myths of origin: a legal system heir to Roman law, a social ethos of solidarity grounded on Christian and humanist legacies, a recognition of individual rights and freedoms, and a universalism derived from Enlightenment principles of reason, universalism, and cosmopolitanism. It was in relation to those values and principles of postwar "Europe" that the gay movement would also come to define itself. Fuelled by rural-to-urban and transnational movements of people triggered by WWII and its aftermath, as well as by a growing "lifestyle" consumer culture, gay men eventually started to perceive themselves as members of an oppressed minority and come together as a transnational political constituency. As recent studies have shown, central to the coalescence of the movement around liberal universalism was its transnational coordination by means of media exchanges among gay men at local, national, and supranational levels. Those studies, however, have privileged activist organisations, their relationships with national and supranational European political institutions, and their media networks, despite the fact that media scholars have convincingly argued that it was erotica and porn, and not activist media, that managed to reach the largest numbers of gay men across extensive geographies, ultimately connecting them and allowing them to imagine a community of which they were part.To address that scholarly gap, "The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000" will map for the first time the European networks of production, circulation and consumption of gay erotica and porn magazines published between the end of WWII and the turn of the 21st century, and build on them to develop a cultural study of "Europe" as imagined by gay men. We will do so in three key innovative ways: (1) by exploring how the gay sexual imaginary mediated by print gay porn cultures will have catalysed new and likely conflicting ways for gay men across Europe to imagine both one another and their non-European others. (2) by investigating the resonances and dissonances within and between that pan-European gay sexual imaginary and the Europeanist imaginary being advanced by political institutions. (3) by focusing on the erotics of "homoeuropeanism" to interrogate what we talk (or don't talk) about when we talk about "Europe." At a time when nationalisms and euro-scepticism is gaining political momentum across the continent, the project will offer a new important vantage point from where to think "Europe" through unveiling how the latter was imagined and erotically iterated by a minoritised community that would eventually be embraced by European institutions themselves as a way of defining the exceptionality of Europe against its others.